In a decisive move to bolster campus security, Volusia County Schools is rolling out an artificial intelligence platform, ZeroEyes, designed to detect guns on school property rapidly. The tech will augment security measures by integrating with the school's digital camera systems. When a potential threat is spotted, the system will send the video to a dedicated operations center, manned by military and law enforcement veterans, for verification and response coordination.
"Our goal is to be a trailblazer for school safety in Florida," Superintendent Carmen Balgobin said, as reported by WFTV. Volusia's initiative is part of a broader school safety strategy, which includes safe school officers, emergency alert systems, and controlled access points across all school facilities. The school district, the largest employer in the county, intends to actively safeguard the over 60,000 students and the 8,000 staff within its nearly 70 traditional schools.
Lauded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with the SAFETY Act designation, the ZeroEyes technology has previously been tested with positive outcomes by the Daytona Beach Police Department. Following the initial pilot phase, Volusia County Schools appreciated the system's critical value, as reported by FOX35 Orlando. The AI's ability to swiftly route images of a visible firearm to an operations center, where they are then analyzed and acted upon within seconds, underpins its effectiveness.
